Martin Luther King by Trevor McDonald review: a fine report on the positive changes in racial equality that King pioneered

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Martin Luther King by Trevor McDonald (ITV) could easily have been a paint-by-numbers look at an overfamiliar figure. To mark the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination, the former newsreader travelled through the American South in the civil rights leader’s footsteps. But while there was nothing especially revelatory, this documentary was elevated by the quality of the interviewees and McDonald’s evident love of his subject. How many other presenters could recruit John Lewis, the US Representative for Georgia who marched alongside King, the former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and supermodel Naomi Campbell?

Martin Luther King is remembered for his words, and four words in particular, but McDonald, fittingly for a former newsreader, reminded us that the civil rights movement was mainly about images. Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. Hundreds of thousands gathered at the Washington monument. Police using water cannon and dogs to disperse black men, women and children who had peacefully gathered. Television showed America itself, and America didn’t like what it saw.

Trevor McDonald in Atlanta, GeorgiaCredit:
ITV

It feels like ancient history, particularly as the “I have a dream” speech must be one of the last mass public events recorded almost entirely in black and white. But as McDonald showed us, it’s still recent history. While some of the heroes of the time are still alive, so, too, are some of the Ku Klux Klan members who opposed them. The former KKK member who agreed to be interviewed is a reformed character, but in MLK’s time, he and other right-wing extremists were happy to stand back and watch as the police used force on the basis of its own citizens’ skin colour. The police brutality of the time, footage of which so shocked many Americans, is routinely echoed in the news today.

Over his career McDonald has reported on great positive changes in racial equality in Britain and America. In hindsight they seem inevitable, but they weren’t. They happened because King, and others like him, led the way.